Monday, November 16, 2009

Random Thoughts Monday

Totally unrelated to anything here: a girl who enjoys a good sub sandwich

Today is that kind of a Monday which bodes ill for the coming week. Grey, damp, rumors of snow or freezing drizzle buzzing about, and just bone numbingly cold. I know, I know, come January, this weather will feel tropical but right now I am feeling a strong pull towards hibernation. So I am making up my own theme for this day as my brain waves are refusing to adhere into anything coherent. Welcome then to Random Thought Monday!

Over the weekend we took Cowgirl to see a performance of the Shaolin Warriors. She had seen the flier come in the mail and had been asking to go. Wanting to encourage her interest in martial arts, we decided it was worth the risk of her falling asleep during the performance and got tickets. Once the show started, there was no way was she going to sleep through it! For two hours she sat enraptured of every kick, leap, punch, spin and flip, clapping enthusiastically with the rest of the audience.

She is in her second year of a Little Dragons martial arts program and holds one of the highest ranks in her group (most families sign up for one year and do not renew, but we renewed and now have a new crop of kids joining her) and is very proud of this fact. A natural leader (yes, a spin on the moniker Bossy Britches) she loves mentoring the new students. Having seen her instructors demonstrating stick fighting, she began to grab dried stalks from the day lilies for her practice. I can only imagine what she will try next now that she's seen the monks breaking metal rods over their heads!

Yes, she is wearing a dog's snout mask on her head. She more accurately looks like the Monkey King warrior, but she adamantly refuses to accept she was born in the year of the monkey. I am a tiger and apparently monkeys and tigers are not compatible. This topic came up the other day in my Chinese class. My teacher very delicately informed me "tigers and monkeys generally do not mix well together." She went on to explain "In China there is a saying, in the forest where there is no tiger, monkey can be king." And that, my friends, was my A HA! moment. Summed up in one phrase is a description of the relationship between Cowgirl and myself. The poor hubby (Soda Pop Pop as Cowgirl likes to call him) is the meekest of all the zodiac: a rabbit.Continuing to explore the fascinating workings of a five year old's mind ... a recent development is an imaginary friend named Binker. Now, I have to take the blame for planting this seed: Binker is a poem by A. A. Milne which I have read to her on a number of occasions. It starts out:

Binker (what I call him) is a secret of my own,And Binker is the reason why I never feel alone.Playing in the nursery, sitting on the stair,Whatever I am busy at, Binker will be there.

So the twist is Binker is the one responsible for anything that might get Cowgirl into trouble. For example, when she asks if she can watch television and I tell her "it is a school day - remember our rule? No television on a school day." She will response "That was Binker asking." Or if she makes a rude noise she will inform me "Mommy, that wasn't me - that was Binker!" We are getting a lot of "Binker said that" around here.

Another fun phrase I want to remember is "all the numbers." This generally means A Lot or also can be referencing an amount equal to any previously mentioned number. Cowgirl has a penchant for rattling off a stream of numbers rather than saying one amount. So if she telling me a story about super heroes, she might say all these monsters - 39, 101, 1045 - came in to attack Spiderman. But then the other super heroes, all the numbers, came to help out. Or when discussing how much she loves me, she might say "I love you 101, 525, one thousand - ALL the numbers!"

Final random thought for today: either I am just living my life like a squirrel madly amassing her nuts for the long winter haul, or else I am seriously embarking upon a career in collaging. As part of the Art Every Day month, I've been making these postcards.

This first stage is just the collaging and I plan to add writing or stamping of some kind to the pieces but I seem to be in a collage making trance. I have finishing touches to do to my final project for Goddess school

but I already bought another canvas today for a larger scale version of my postcards. It's not that I have an idea of what I want to make, but I have an inkling of how I want to make a piece. And stashed away in envelopes, file folders and notebooks are bits and pieces of elements I'd begun amassing for this next project before I was even aware I was going to be making it. Could Mod Podge fumes be responsible? Perhaps a the suburban fairy cousin to La Feé Verté or the abstinthe green fairy of Moulin Rouge fame?

Oh my, now I'm really on a roll ... have I mentioned Ewan McGregor is my bizarro world husband? Okay, I'll save that for another post ...

The story of my journey to Cowgirl featured here:

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All words, photographs and art work on this site are (c) Lisa Hofmann unless otherwise noted. If you want to use any of my work, please make sure I am credited and drop me an email Lishofmann88(at)gmail(dot)com or leave a comment. Keep your karmic field clear! Each of us has an abundance of gifts and talents, so tap into yours ♥